


Out There In Here, In Here Out There

by batzbatzbatz



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (but not in a strictly sad way!!), ....?, Afterlife, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ghosts, Heaven, I Made Myself Cry, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, POV First Person (technically), Post-Canon, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 09:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19354609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batzbatzbatz/pseuds/batzbatzbatz
Summary: We are Here, the You and the I and all of Our people; We are Here and everything will be alright.or: I put on Jack Stauber to be weird and moody, but I guess I've been watching the Twilight Zone a lot lately, too, and somehow the combination of those with teenage ~~~ness created this modernist mess, which I do not have the capacity to properly describe.





	Out There In Here, In Here Out There

**Author's Note:**

> yes! it's a harry potter fic in 2019; you're legally allowed to kill me and i will not protest when the bullet begins to hurtle toward me (if you allow me the courtesy of a warning).  
> in all seriousness, though, if you're here, it's because you were *looking* for it--something which is, i'd like you to note, much less shameful; personally, as someone who has written something that you were looking for and enjoys when people enjoy my writing or just look it over, i'm very thankful & immensely enthusiastic that you're looking for harry potter fanfiction in 2019 and beyond.

There is a stretch of time in which We exist—this stretch is unending and the smallest fraction of a second, constantly pushing on and never having happened at all. The places in which this occurs in are dark, nearly pitch-black to such a level that Our eyes do not adjust, though We must have been Here for several days by now—years, if the I or the You could remember what a year is for certain; despite this, We can navigate the places We find Ourselves in quite easily: We rarely bump into objects such as furniture—if We are in the Flat—or the shadowy beings that—no, the You are right, not those shadows—no, no, not those shadows, do not worry like that—the You are with the I, remember? When We are a We, joint, there is so much less to fear, including the shadows… The I was speaking. Ah. We do not run into the strange figures that permeate some locations, spare for rare occasions when We are worried or in haste; We touch Each Other though the figures cannot touch Us.

The You remembered the Your name longer than the I remembered the Mine—even though the You came to this place long before the I did; both of Ours are gone now, regardless of Our ability to recognize Others—but We do not know Their names anymore either. The You does not speak of—well, no, We do not speak in the sense that the figures speak; the I think that We did, when We were the same as the figures, though—the You does not speak of the time before the I arrived.

The I remember when the I came. The She—the vibrant one of the many She—came so soon afterward; the She embraced the Me and We were all crying, all of Us—the You and the I and the She and the Ones who arrived before us—both of the Your brothers, the One who was the Mine as well and the Other of the Yours; Our sister, the wife of Our brother; all that were taken from Us, a startling number that makes the My bones grow weary (as the I think they often did when we were the figures), but the Boy—the son of Our brother and sister—has yet to arrive, thank whatever is in here with Us, and the One—the Rat—sometimes the I think the I hear the Him scurrying through Our walls, but the He has yet to show the Himself.

The You stared at the Me and asked the Me: “Remus—” (For that is what the I remember, and the I suppose that must be the My name.) “—Remus?” And the I threw the My arms around the You and We were, once more, a We, and the I spoke but the I do not remember what the I said; it was unimportant; We became a We once more and while the I was glad—overwhelmed—somehow, for something, ashamed and guilty—to see the Others, We were what the I of the We felt the most.

The I believe that the I was married to the She, in the space when the I was one of the figures and the You was here already. The I believe that the I and the She had a child; that is where the I and the She go when the Two of Us go without the You: the She and the I go and see a Boy—not the Boy, but the He is often there as well; sometimes the Boy’s face flickers and the He seems older, much closer to how We are. The Boy of the I and the She is taken care of by the Boy and the Girl who the I recall the He growing so close to prior to the My arrival. The I know—the You were already gone; it was a wonderful little thing to see, scary as it was to see proof of the Boy getting older. The You would have known how to appreciate and savor it better than the I did, but when the I did, the I did so with the determination of doing so just as well as the You would have. The I am so sorry the You were not there.

Sometimes when the She and the I go to see the Boy of the She and the I, the brother of the You and the I and the sister of the You and the I accompany us; they come to see the Boy of Them. We should have raised the Boy—no, many of those figures lurking around would not have allowed the Me any such thing, even if the You had not chased the Rat; the I do not blame the You. Even though We did not, the I am so proud of how the Boy has turned out. The You are welcome to join Our brother and sister to see the Boy whenever the You are ready to—but if the You never is, that is alright with the Me: the I can continue to tell the You all that the I glean of him. The You must know that the Boy would never be upset to know the You were there with him as his Parents, Our siblings, are so often.

(The Boys and those who are Theirs in the sense that those of Our family Here are Ours are figures as We are not. Somehow, this does not matter, or affect Our ability to see Them.)

The My favorite part—of anything that We experience Here, or Anywhere that we venture to—but it is best here in the Flat, for this was undoubtedly Ours, so long ago, and in Here We can be sequestered, but not separated, and in here We can be full of that which should only have ever been expressed to Each Other, not to Any Other (even the She; but the I did not know that the I would ever, ever see the You again, and—We have been over this; the I know the You do not blame the Me, but still the I continue to try to justify it)… the My favorite part of anything that We experience anywhere we go is when the You reaches out from across the room to the Me. We lost Our faces such a long time ago, but the I know the You and the You know the Me. The I believe that We could find each other anywhere—We did not, but that is because the I did not try, in the Dark Time; ah, yes, the You did not try first, when the You thought the I was the Rat, but that was brief, and the I did not seek the You even in the My dreams or ideas for a very, very, very long time.

And for that same very, very, very long time, the You were alone with the things that were not shadows. The I will never cement Us heavily enough or love the You enough to stop feeling guilty for that. The I should have known that it was a lie—and the I think that the I may have, but the I was too afraid to contemplate it rather than bat the idea away as soon as it would emerge. The You, once, was resentful of the Me for that, but We do not feel such things Here: We did, far ago in the Beginning of when the I came to be Here, but We have healed as separate creatures and as a force of two-made-one.

But We are Here. The You and Our brother are full of effervescence and energy that seems strange in Our Flat—Our Flat is neither dreary not dark, but it is a place of peace and the Two of You are all about disrupting what peaces have settled for too long. The I and Our sister discuss everything at length and mingle Together in an inexplicable way of family and warmth, just as the I do with Our brother. The She of who the I am from is a sun; No One is ever sad Here, but the You sometimes brush so close against the edge of sadness—rulebreaker—and the You aches for adoration that the She of who the You are from would never allow—but it is never denied Here, and your volatile, nearly impossible closeness with sadness always turns so harshly around and veers into deep, exuberant happiness. The brother of the You who is not also the brother of the I gives Us hits of melancholy, bittersweet, but We always leave the Him happier, for the He does adore the You in the way that all little brothers do. The friends We had are Here, too.

We are Here where We are safe from all that has ever touched Us—the monster of the Mine, the things that hung to the You like glue. We are only We, painless and—it is too risky to say We are free.

The I speak as if all of these things—all of these meetings with Others, all of these healings and occurrences between Us—do not happen at once, are not happening at once, did not happen at once, will not happen at once: they are, do, did, and will. There are reasons the We—all of the Us, not just the two-made-one We of the You and the I—have foregone words in the manners that the figures use them; it is all but useless, exceptionally so when trying to be stretched into a medium that can convey such concepts as this.

All of these things that happen Here are happening at once; they already happened; they will happen soon—they happen as a unified contingent, one massive conglomerate. It is hard to understand when the I try to speak of it like the figures would. But We are Here; the I am Here and the You are Here and our family and friends are Here.

There is a stretch of time in which We exist—this stretch is unending and the smallest fraction of a second, constantly pushing on and never having happened at all. This stretch is all that the I has ever wanted to have with the You.


End file.
